"Who is going to save our Church? Not our bishops, not our priests and religious. It is up to you, the people. You have the minds, the eyes, the ears to save the Church. Your mission is to see that your priests act like priests, your bishops, like bishops, and your religious act like religious." - Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, 1972

Monday, July 10, 2017

ON THE "APPROVAL" OF THE NEOCATS

It is interesting that the Neocats are very quiet on everything that is going against them. Of course, we know they operate in secrecy, because they are not Catholic, though they want us to believe that they are. But for them to debunk what we are doing, they have nothing but, "We have been approved by three popes and umpteen cardinals and archbishops." It's really more like, "We bought our way into the Church so we can take it over. Sorry, Jack! LFM and CCOG. Guam's JungleWatch Dog!

This comment reminded me of something I have been intending to write about the so-called "approval" of the neocats by popes, bishops, etc.

Kiko Arguello, in demanding that his movement not be labeled a "movement," set up the path to his own destruction. I will explain.

Kiko and Carmen fought hard not to have the Church label the NCW a "movement" like Focolare, the Charismatic Movement, Communion and Liberation, etc. (There are over 100.) To be labeled a movement would have subjected the NCW to the oversight of a particular Vatican dicastery and the whims of whoever was running that dicastery at the time.

In order for his NCW to take over the Catholic world, Kiko and Carmen designed it to be outside the oversight of the Vatican and only under the purview of individual diocesan bishops. While there was still a risk that certain bishops would not welcome them, there are over 5000 bishops, so the odds were good that they could find plenty of places to fester.

There were also some other advantages. By calling themselves only an "itinerary of faith formation," they had the perfect disguise to slip into dioceses. Also, once sanctioned by a usually unaware bishop, they had access to everything that belonged to the parishes where they set up shop, including the cover to collect money and not account for it.

However, this setup was also Kiko's Achille's Heel. Article 1, Section 2 of the 2008 Statute of the Neocatechumenal Way, the one which received "final approval," states:

The Neocatechumenal Way is at the service of the bishop as one of the forms of diocesan implementation of Christian initiation and of ongoing education in faith.

This means that IT DOESN'T MATTER how many popes, or bishops, or archbishops, or Tom, Dick and Harry's "approved" the neocats. All that matters - PER ITS OWN STATUTE - is that it is "approved" for "service" in a diocese by the diocesan bishop. In our case, that is ARCHBISHOP MICHAEL J. BYRNES, and no one else.

And Archbishop Byrnes, because he is responsible for the eternal salvation of souls in his diocese, had demanded to review the Catechetical Directory of the NCW for himself, and so far, all the neocats in this diocese have done is flip him off. Right, Atienza?